


Shadows from the end of the line

by skaralding



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dark Ron Weasley, Drabble Collection, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Multi, Pre-Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-07-29 15:34:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16267136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skaralding/pseuds/skaralding
Summary: Ron dies with malice in his heart. He planned to go out with a smile, but hey, plans change.He's surprised at how well that decision turns out.





	1. shadow rising

**Author's Note:**

> Started this as a 100 words drabble response to [a challenge on fail_fandomanon](https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/327788.html?thread=1885240428#cmt1885240428), and just kept going. Each scene is a 100 words, or close to it. Note that this starts somewhat dark and then meanders off into flangstland, and there are eventual bits of H/R/H smut.

## 1

Ron dies with malice in his heart. He planned to go out with a smile, but hey, plans change.

Malice feels better anyway. On him, it is a tired sneer, almost a smirk, one that is only seen by the painstaking wards, and by the candles and chalk and blackening blood of all the ritual circles surrounding him.

He knows he shouldn’t do this. Harry would tell him to hold on to hope; Hermione would tell him to _think_ , but they’re both long gone. Taken from him.

With his last breath, he stabs his magic out, and tears through time.

* * *

The next thing he sees is unbelievable. Red, lush velvet above him; soft sheets below. Ron slips out of bed on small, silent paws, inspecting everything, believing nothing.

Nothing, until he comes across a familiar lump near the foot of his bed. _Rat,_ his instincts tell him, and in a flash he _has_ it.

He rips it apart. He’s surprised, for one long moment, that the bloody chunks don’t transform, don’t become larger than him. Musing, he picks at the small corpse, narrowing his eyes, lashing his tail in triumph when he finds a tiny paw missing a finger bone.

* * *

Morning is hard. It’s not just his body that doesn’t feel right, it’s _everything_. Harry is too thin; Hermione is too nervous. Ginny bravely pretends to be recovered, though she isn’t.

Ron hates that he ever missed spotting all this. Spotting that when Percy is calmly insistent that Scabbers was just frightened off, he is saying the words mostly for himself.

It half tickles him that he wasn’t wrong about Fred and George, that they _were_ nearly always too busy cooking something up to pay him much attention.

They’re all so young.

_This time,_ he thinks, _nothing will touch them._

* * *

## 2

The diadem is first. Fiendfyre scars his hands, but it’s worth it. How the horcrux screamed…

The next two take months. Breaking into Gringotts alone is _not_ a job for a thirteen-year-old, even one that’s far older (and crazier) than he looks. But it’s Gringotts first, because Grimmauld Place means needing to find Sirius.

(Sirius, who goes under a very light _Imperio_ , to make sure he doesn’t get himself killed. Again.)

(Sirius, whose ghost is why Ron thought to try all this.)

The locket pleads. Offers him things. Ron pretends to listen, then melts it down, thoroughly altering the metal.

* * *

The metal sings to Ron. He starts taking trips, covering Britain first, then France. He knows it is excessive, killing every Death Eater he can find with the former locket’s song, but he has to do _something_.

Voldemort is avoiding him. _Voldemort_ , for fuck’s sake, though goodness knows who exactly Voldemort _thinks_ he’s avoiding by scuttling across Europe, moving every month.

The World Cup is just that; a whole lot of Quidditch. Pure enjoyment, especially since it means getting Lucius with something nice and slow. In half a year, Narcissa will bury him, and Ron will sleep much more soundly.

* * *

Ron finds Voldemort at the start of fifth year. It’s… anticlimactic. He doesn’t last long enough, _pay_ enough.

Still, with that done, Ron’s finally able to admit he needs to stop clinging to his friends. He feels guilty, yet horribly relieved to be staging an exit, because though he loves them, so, _so_ much, it hasn’t been at all the same.

And he’s been yearning to have more time to deal with some things, with certain people. In this timeline, when he dies, it will be strictly temporary.

He doesn’t attend his funeral. He doesn’t want to see them cry.

* * *

Ron doesn’t choose to become a Dark Lord on a whim. He first considers the facts.

Fact: Ron’s allies are all convinced that he’ll seize power anyway. Disappearing now will only mean that someone else will try it in his stead, and thoroughly cock it all up.

Fact: Voldemort is not wizarding Britain’s only problem. The crackdown on muggleborn and creature rights didn’t come out of nowhere in his time; the seeds are present here too.

Stalling, he reads a staggering amount of history, praying he hasn’t missed another way forward. He’s bitterly unsurprised to realize there is nothing else.

* * *

## 3

When next Ron sees Harry, five years have passed, and Harry’s in among the newest recruits, looking horribly excited. Still, Ron doesn’t feel even a bit guilty at how Harry’s face falls when he is dismissed.

“I can fight,” Harry insists. _Yes, you can,_ Ron thinks, his finger stroking the mirror’s glass. _But not this time, you won’t._ “If you could just–”

“I’m sorry,” his officer says. “It’s out of my hands, I’m afraid.”

Harry’s mouth thins. “Next year, then?” he says, more to himself than anyone around him.

Ron’s shoulders droop. Three years of this, and he’s _still trying_.

* * *

Hermione is no less driven. Ron tracks her ascent in the Ministry with both pride and concern, and manages outreach on that front very closely. He watches the crucial meetings via mirror, just to see her at work.

Afterwards, when someone questions the deference they were made to show her, Ron smiles. “Granger’s a force,” he says, “and _very_ eager to prove herself to us. Just the woman I want making all the real decisions.”

“Are we to back her for department head, my lord?”

“No.” Then adds, when the confusion of the questioner is clear: “She won’t need it.”

* * *

Ginny is the first real surprise. Worried, Ron scanned the recruits every year for her, only to read, one morning, that the Harpies had signed her.

He goes to nearly every game. Cloaked, he could be any twitchy, reclusive Quidditch fan. When he watches her fly, he feels he’s already won.

Obviously, that’s not true. He’s currently at war with the Spanish Ministry, and is putting out feelers in Germany, hunting for Fenrir Greyback (for spite) and Walden Macnair (for completion). But it feels rather academic, next to the fact that his friends and family are all alive and thriving.

* * *

## 4

There _are_ things that puzzle him. The fact that Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes chugs along for three years and then goes out of business is bitterly perplexing. The fact that Harry keeps trying to join the ranks is, well, it’s mostly just annoying.

The fact that Hermione is heard to say the right things and voice support for the Shadow Lord (Ron couldn’t help himself), but never ends up recommended to the Second Circle… Ron’s not quite sure what to make of it.

He’d only have to turn her down, anyway. He doesn’t know why he can’t stop thinking about it.

* * *

He sees the attempted coup coming. Bored and reckless, he lets it gather steam, only to find the cracks it was growing from are deeper than he expected.

Furious, Ron leads the kind of purge that would have made the Death Eaters blanch. His usual friends-and-family checks slide and slide again, until he hasn’t seen them in months, and he’s starting to go spare from the worry that something might have managed to happen to them.

When he finally picks up Harry’s trail again, he’s bitterly unsurprised that it leads right back to his main camp in Brussels.

* * *

He can’t dismiss Harry outright. Harry, persistent, self-sacrificing, stupidly competent gobshite that he is, has of course made himself invaluable. Grinding his teeth, Ron settles for making Hermione and, for an extra twist of the knife, Molly, aware that their adopted brother-son was haring off after glory again.

Somehow, he doesn’t expect that when Mum shows up, it’s to _congratulate_ Harry.

_Harry,_ Ron wants to say, _is serving a **Dark Lord** , for fuck’s sake!_ She’d have dragged Ron home by his ear, of course, but Harry? _Harry_ gets his favourite tarts, hand-delivered.

Fuming, Ron steals all but one.

* * *

Still fuming, Ron isn’t in the best mood when the next celebratory, we-crushed-them meeting of his Greater Circle turns into a hail of harsh words and mutual accusations of treachery.

He is even less amused when one side produces a tight-lipped Hermione as an unwilling witness.

“What is this?” Ron asks, and by the way his Circle stills, his temper is showing.

“Evidence, my lord,” several hasten to say, but he ignores them, heading for her.

“Well?” he asks Hermione, ignoring the sweating witch holding her arm. “Speak.”

“They’re all in on it,” she says, and faints.

* * *

## 5

Ron’s first impulse is to slaughter. Somehow, the only spell he utters is one for a massive, room-spanning stun.

Rage makes his hands tremble as he bends in over Hermione’s fallen, sprawled, painfully familiar form. Her breath is warm against his fingers. “Kreacher.”

“Master?”

“My rooms, for this one,” he says. “Keep her comfortable.”

Kreacher levitates Hermione and bears her away with exaggerated care. It’d be a sight to make Ron smile, if he wasn’t so aware of what caused it.

Balm for that ache comes in the form of the witch that brought Hermione. Smiling, Ron wakes her.

* * *

Part of why Ron is so very, _very_ angry as he purges the rest of the traitors is not due to the way Hermione cringed before him, or the careful way she stood in that dead witch’s grip. It’s because her hurt feels like his fault.

He’d thought distancing himself from her and Harry and everyone else would be enough to keep them safe. It hadn’t.

He’d known of some of the traitors, yet had put off their inevitable deaths to better flush out the rest.

_No more,_ he thinks, as he tears a sobbing witch’s heart out. _Never again._

* * *

After the witch comes a wizard and another witch: the three heads, it seems, of the betraying factions. Once Ron’s hands are clean enough of blood, and the remnants of his Circle are back in their positions in camp, he retires to his rooms.

Kneeling, Hermione receives him, and very properly refuses to rise, or be so bold as to look up at him, so Ron, after a few, charged moments, lets go of the wild urge to shed his aura and his glamour before her.

“Bravely done,” he says, to her. “You may leave, for now.”

Hurrying, she obeys.

* * *

## 6

Songs are sung about the day the Shadow carved his Circle nearly in half. Stopping the spread of that stuff is more trouble than it’s worth, so now and then, Ron finds himself enduring one of them as he strolls through camp.

The worst is ‘ _the Shadow’s heart_ ’, which has Ron leaping to catch his fainting lover (Hermione) and then disembowelling half the Circle with one piercing cry. Stunning everyone and waking them individually for interrogation was obviously too boring for _that_ fevered songwriter.

No one mentions the song to Ron. They’re all much too worried it might be true.

* * *

Rumours of his grand passion soon subside, because Ron elevates Hermione to the Second Circle, commends her bravery, then dismisses her without batting an eye. It probably helps that she, like everyone else, is visibly and persistently terrified of him.

For the next few months, Ron stews in angry thought, considering his choices. He thinks, in painstaking detail, about the gulf between what he wants of his future, and what is possible to get.

When the sullen fire of civil war finally goes out, he writes a careful letter.

It starts: “Dear Hermione and Harry…”

He nearly doesn’t send it.

* * *

Somehow, his plan doesn’t feel real until he hears the two familiar, whispering voices approaching the clearing in the pitch black grove, the one he set for the meeting.

“It’s obviously bullshit,” Harry is whispering, “but we can still learn something useful.”

“ _If_ we aren’t killed,” Hermione mutters, but of course she’s still tramping along behind him. “I still don’t think–”

She freezes when she sees him. Harry does too, a beat later, and Ron is left staring at both of them across the clearing, so happy, and yet so weary and unsure that he’s not sure he should have come.

* * *

“ _Ron?_ ” That’s the first thing Harry says, and for a moment, Ron’s so relieved he could cry. Then he notices that Harry isn’t coming any closer, and that he and Hermione have both drawn their wands, and he realizes he’s going to need plan B.

“I’m not precisely him,” he says, spreading and raising empty hands. “The Shadow’s mercy can only do so much.”

Harry’s wand shakes. “Prove it.”

“Uh,” Ron says, because for a moment, he really can’t think of anything. “Sirius killed Scabbers?”

He’s trying to think of something better when he sees Hermione begin to lower her wand.

* * *

## 7

They sit in silence on the prickly forest floor, Ron’s back against the trunk of a twisted oak, Hermione and Harry just far apart enough that it’d be tricky for him to target them both.

He’s told them his carefully manufactured story, one of kidnapping and halted human sacrifice and years of fogged memories, but he can tell they don’t completely believe him.

Five times he decides against memory-charming them and leaving. It won’t end well if he stays, and yet he cannot help but sit there another moment, looking at them, glorying in knowing they’re looking at _him_.

* * *

“So,” Hermione says, “you gained the Greater Circle. Were you there, when I…?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’d remembered, by then,” she adds. “Yet you’ve only just bothered to reach out.”

“I wasn’t sure–”

“You berk,” Harry says, and runs up and tackles him. Ron’s smiling, tearing up already, so he doesn’t understand, for a moment, why he ends up with his stomach to the ground, and his arms wrenched behind his back. Harry feels achingly familiar above him, a too-solid weight. “Hurry, Hermione.”

“ _Veritas_ ,” Hermione whispers. As she presses her bleeding palm to Ron’s head, he can’t help but smile.

* * *

They question him for hours. Mostly variations on ‘who are you’, as well as a dogged attempt at confirming his bullshit story.

Ron can’t be completely honest, but he tries. He doesn’t know what he’s prouder of, that Hermione’s painstakingly crafted charm works strongly enough to put pressure on even him, or that his friends are ruthless enough to wield it.

Harry relieves Hermione when her hands start shaking. Then, when he tires, he sits back, exchanging a look with Hermione, and then reaches down to drag Ron to his feet. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Home, obviously,” Hermione snaps. “Honestly, Ron.”

* * *

## 8

Ron can’t believe how simple it is, being taken back into the fold. He moves through Harry’s musty flat like a ghost, itching to clean it, yet touching nothing.

All his instincts are wrong. This is Harry as he knew him, before: hard, wiry, muscled, quick with curses. But this Harry smiles, too, for no reason, and when he drags Ron onto the couch beside him, it’s not because Ron’s all he has left.

They watch TV. They eat lo mein out of hastily cleaned bowls (Harry cooks! “Just when there’s time…”). Ron relaxes beside him, and feels at home.

* * *

Hermione returns with a sullen pop. “The Burrow’s empty,” she grouses. “Left a note, though, so they might drop in later.” As she says this, she frowns at Ron. “Will you–”

“I’m staying the night,” Ron says, anticipating her question. “I took holiday.”

Satisfied, she edges in and sits down, forcing him and Harry to move up. Squirming, Ron tries to settle, to stop thinking of the way Hermione’s hand feels in his hair. Harry’s arm is still around his shoulders, and he can’t help remembering the last time he was the one in the middle.

He wants it again.

* * *

Ron fidgets between them, his cock swelling despite his desperate attempts at calming down. Harry notices, and gives him an embarrassed smile, and starts to pull away.

So Ron _has_ to kiss him. Has to pull Harry close and swallow his reluctant moan, because otherwise he’d try to leave Ron with Hermione, to be polite.

“Um,” Hermione says, from beside them. “I’ll, er…”

“Come here,” Ron says, roughly, and she does.

She still moans the way he remembers. Gasps, when he fingers her. Ron licks deep inside her, shivering as Harry thrusts between his thighs, and feels he’s in heaven.

* * *


	2. shadow settling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time, Ron ended up in bed with Harry and Hermione. Now for the aftermath.

## 1

Morning is glorious. Harry’s curled up to the right, and Hermione’s snoring to the left, and Ron feels pleasantly sore, and just a bit sleepy. The flat is dark. Soothingly quiet.

Some moments later, an alarm clock shrills, and Hermione wakes to silence it with a muttered curse, only for Ron’s armband to start whistling too. “Shite,” he murmurs. “The parade.”

“Ugh,” Hermione moans. “Can we not…?”

“I have to,” Ron says, so she presses her mouth to his, and nudges Harry awake to do the same. “Tomorrow?”

“Definitely.” That’s Hermione. “Hrmgh.” That’s Harry.

He loves them both so much.

* * *

Ron can’t be chipper; he’s got a reputation to uphold as The Shadow. What he _can_ be is incredibly, unrelentingly smug, with a new lust for life.

“Europe is mine,” he cackles, to the uneasy Greater Circle.

“That was me,” he confesses, to his friends and family, regarding the attempts to keep Harry out of the Corps. “Sorry.”

“ _Sorry_?” Harry squawks. “Four years, I wasted–”

“On improving,” Ron says, evenly. “Don’t try telling me you didn’t need it, on this last campaign.”

Harry subsides, muttering sullenly. The conversation moves on to marriages, and Bill and Dad make sure it stays there.

* * *

He can’t see everyone as often as he’d like. He complains about it at George and Neville’s wedding, only to be teased for his trouble.

“If you want this so badly,” Hermione murmurs, her hands trapping his wrists, “you need to work harder at it.”

Ron snarls, but he can’t form words with Harry’s hard, calloused hand stroking him. Tightening, and speeding up, and then going tortuously slowly, making him shiver.

No one else in this timeline has heard him beg. No one. “Please,” he rasps. “Harry, _please_.”

“Later,” is the unyielding, almost gloating response. “Only when you’re inside her.”

* * *

Later, Ron suffers through Hermione’s three, breathless orgasms. He sobs as she licks him clean, then holds him open for Harry to sink into.

“Promise,” Harry says, raggedly. “Do it.”

“I won’t leave again,” Ron whispers. “I– _please_ –”

When Hermione guides him back into her slick cunt, he loses a moment to a fierce, mind-flaying throb of pleasure. He doesn’t realize he’s coming until he hears her saying his name again and again.

Afterwards is awkward, but pleasantly so. They clean each other up. Hermione summons her unfinished book, and he and Harry read over her shoulder, cracking jokes.

* * *

## 2

It’s not all roses.

Ginny, though obviously glad to have Ron back, is wary of him. He figures she’s sensitive to his aura, which doesn’t ever quite go away, nowadays. He doesn’t press her.

Percy lectures him about playing bodyguard to The Shadow; he keeps pressing Ron to seize the chance to represent the Weasleys in the Circle. “Dad’s too old,” it always goes, “I’m Ministry, Bill’s Gringotts, Charlie’s a Dragon, and the twins…” Percy always sighs in the same place. “You _know_ it has to be you.”

“Or Mum,” Ron always says, and that reliably derails the whole lecture.

* * *

Mum is furious with him, murderously angry in a way that would make Ron tag her with a watcher or two if she _was_ in the Circle. The way she sees it, the Shadow Lord has stolen her youngest son, and the fact that he’s loosened his hold on Ron now doesn’t change the fact that Ron is forcibly bound to him.

Ron, as himself, gets wept on, and clutched, and treated with kid gloves, sent back to camp every time with a hefty hamper.

Ron, as the Shadow, gets a formal, frigid card at Christmas, and never anything else.

* * *

The worst of it is Sirius. Who _knew_ , from the first moment Ron was dragged into the Burrow’s kitchen, yet played along with fervent hugs and exclamations.

When Ron cornered him later, thinking to try a little honesty, Sirius promptly sank to his knees and wouldn’t get up.

“The boy has served me all these years,” Ron finally forced himself to say. “He has only ever asked this one, small thing.”

“My lord is generous,” Sirius murmured. But his hands shook, and an unspoken question lingered in his tone.

“They will come to no harm,” Ron said. “On my honour.”

* * *

## 3

Sirius’ concern annoys Ron. It shouldn’t; Sirius was the first person to see his mask, the first to see it and live, at any rate.

It was necessary. The then surviving Death Eaters had added foolish sums and come up with Sirius’ escape as the start of their troubles, and Ron had nudged and baited them until they moved on Grimmauld Place.

Ron had taken care to shade Sirius’ memories, had sworn him to the lightest of vows. He’s always checked on Sirius first, in his rounds. It’s _stupid_ , that Sirius mistrusts him. Stupid, annoying, unfair.

Somehow, he bears it.

* * *

Months later, as Ron signs a treaty at Durmstrang, he decides to do something. Sirius’, concern, annoying as it is, is nothing beside Ron’s increasing awareness that the safest place for anyone he loves is beneath his shadow.

He can’t presently see any safe way to mark them all as his, so for now, he’ll be subtle. He spends a long, lazy day refining Harry’s wards, and another on Hermione’s.

Weeks later, as he burns the Shadow’s seal into the Burrow’s outer wards, Bill chokes. “That symbol! You can’t…”

“I have permission,” Ron says, entirely truthfully. “Don’t worry about it.”

* * *

When the First Circle delicately broach the topic of marriage for the year, Ron says he’s already considering it.

Naturally, this means he has to spend a valuable hour fielding different phrasings of ‘who is your choice, most Glorious Shadow’. By the end of the meeting, Ron’s annoyed, and his only solace is that they’re all too busy eyeing each other and thinking frantically about whose heirs have been most recently paraded before him.

He’s extremely glad that Hermione is not in the First Circle. That stupid song still persists; today’s meeting would only have made her twitchier around him.

* * *

Ron almost talks himself into suggesting that Hermione and Harry make a horcrux each, for safety. He’s seen no effect on his temperament these last three years; the necklace has not changed him.

What stops him is the inescapable, irrational fear that if he so much as whispers that word to them, they’ll _know_. Know who he copied from, though there’s really no way they could.

And so he remains, caught between two equally terrifying fears. Fear of their deaths spearing him once again; fear of their just abandonment.

He’s endured worse. It’s the only thing that keeps him sane.

* * *

## 4

The stupidest thing gives Ron away. Not the nightmares, not his aura, not his murderous reflexes, nothing he knew to worry about.

It’s his voice. His _voice_.

He’s inspecting the Corps (boring, but necessary), and he notices, halfway through his survey of the Eighteenth, that Harry is vibrating with tension. Ron Floos him that night, concerned, and when Harry begs him to come all the way through, he thinks nothing of it.

He knows, the moment he lands in Hermione’s grate, that something is wrong, because Harry’s on his knees, and Hermione is trying and failing to urge him up.

* * *

“You don’t understand,” she’s hissing at Harry, when Ron freezes in the flames. “Could you at least have fucking–” And then they both go still, realizing he’s there, and he’s listening.

Then: “My lord,” Harry says, just a little too loudly, his tone obsequious, his gaze hard. “Forgive our disarray.”

“Harry, _think_ ,” Hermione says. “It can’t be him! The Shadow would never…”

Ron knows his next move should be calm, careful damage control. Instead, he shakes the dust away and steps forward and says, as shadow, “this is your fucking plan, Potter? Confrontation?”

All the colour drains from Hermione’s face.

* * *

Before Hermione can decide whether to gibber or kneel, Ron is by her side, half dragging her over to her favourite armchair. When he’s settled her, he turns back to Harry, only to see that Harry has drawn on him.

_Careful_ , Ron’s inner sense tells him, but it’s too much, he can’t, he’s never been angrier. Disarming Harry hurts. Seeing Harry shaking with rage as Ron surveys him is worse. “This,” he hears himself say, in a thick, ugly tone. “ _This_ is why you fucking died.”

“Ron,” Hermione says, her voice small. “Ron?”

“Shut up,” he snarls. “I haven’t hurt him.”

* * *

## 5

Even now, helpless and in Ron’s power, Harry is glaring at him. “So smart,” Ron says, mockingly, straightening away from his tightly bound form. “Cheeking the Dark Lord, great idea.”

“Ron–”

“Sirius told you,” he says, looking at Hermione, “didn’t he?”

“He did,” Hermione says, waveringly. “He said you were… precious to him.” From the way she says that, it’s obvious that Sirius’ explanation led her to the wrong conclusion. “Did the Shadow forbid you to tell us?”

“No.”

“Then why–”

“Ask him yourself,” Ron says, finally relaxing his fading hold on his aura. “Ask the Shadow what you will.”

* * *

For a moment, there is thick, tense silence.

Then: “No,” Harry snarls. “This– you–”

He’s shaking almost as hard as Ron would be, if the room around them hadn’t fallen dark, despite the flames in the still-roaring fire. Ron, looking at the twisted expression on his friend’s face, buries all his feelings in shadow.

“You killed him,” Hermione says, rage and fear in her broken tone.

“He stole him,” Harry says, flatly. “ _Then_ he killed him.”

“I swear on my blood that I have always been Ronald Bilius Weasley.” Magic sings around them as the vow is proved. “There. Happy?”

* * *

It takes twenty minutes of progressively more dangerous vows for them to be anything like satisfied that he is telling the truth. Hermione won’t look at him anymore; Harry, on the other hand, refuses to take an eye off him.

Ron, his emotions still on a tight rein, takes a stiff-backed seat just in front of the fire. The thick, unbearable silence settles around them again.

Shivering inside, Ron decides to try one last time. “I killed Scabbers.”

“No,” Hermione mutters. “Sirius–”

“I modified his memory.”

“So, in the clearing,” Harry says, “what you said, to us–”

“I lied.”

* * *

“Tell me,” Hermione says, flatly, “why we should believe a single word you say.”

Ron dreads what he’ll have to do to fix this. _I was so careful,_ he can’t help but think, deep inside, where shadow cannot muffle all. _I can’t do this._

He decides to give them one last moment of truth. “In my time,” he says, looking at Hermione, “I didn’t get to hold your body.” Her gaze narrows, and he smiles. “I held Harry’s.”

Then, as they digest that, he casts a light, wide area stun, and hurries to catch Hermione’s toppling form, clutching her close.

* * *

## 6

Ron spends several moments moving his lovers to Harry’s bedroom, then watching for the slightest twitch in their slumbering forms. He knows he should be doing anything else, knows he should either wake them or be gone, but every instinct in him is telling him _stay_.

_Stay, or they’ll disappear._ They’ll die again, somehow, and nothing will be left of his heart.

Eventually, Hermione stirs. Coughs. His heart twists when she turns her fearful gaze on him.

“I won’t come back,” Ron says, before she can ask it, only to feel her hand grab his sleeve, refusing to let go.

* * *

“You promised,” Hermione says. “You _promised_.”

So of course Ron can’t just do the sensible thing and memory charm them both and leave. He promised, didn’t he?

He doesn’t realize he’s laughing hysterically until Hermione draws him down between them, trapping him there so he shakes against her. “You died,” he realizes he’s saying, again and again. “They killed you.”

“We’re alive,” Harry says, from behind him, his tone grudging, his hand heavy on Ron’s hip. “Don’t– don’t cry.”

Ron can’t help but turn around and bury himself in Harry’s arms. Harry’s stiff-armed, reluctant hug is everything he wanted.

* * *

“How did you do it?” Naturally, Harry’s the one to ask that, hours later, after a slow, strange fuck that they all knew was a bad idea, but couldn’t stop. “I mean, time travel’s not really…”

“Long term time travel, you mean,” Hermione murmurs. “Short term loops are just fine.”

“I sacrificed everything for a chance that our souls might meet again,” Ron says, and can’t help but grin at the way they both stiffen. “At least, that’s what the spell I used was called.”

Hermione sits up, glaring down at Ron. “If you ever do that again–”

“I won’t.”

* * *

## 7

The Shadow doesn’t make free promises. Hermione and Harry learn that through trial and error, through long, infuriating arguments that somehow all manage to end in frantic fucking.

“You won’t marry me,” becomes “you _can’t_.” Which soon gains conditions: “not if you aren’t General,” for Harry, and “not until you’re of the First,” for Hermione.

They agree to making horcruxes more easily than Ron expects. Probably it helps that he makes solemn, romantic ceremony of it, and that they needn’t kill anyone. He cut at his own soul to come here; it’s not hard to modify the process for them.

* * *

The first real obstacle is Molly. Sitting her and Arthur down and explaining that Ron is an honoured Aspect of the Shadow’s Face goes about as well as one would expect.

“You’ve been alive, all these years,” she says, her face twisting, “and you never thought to _write_?”

She chases him around the Burrow for a terrifying half hour, sobbing and screaming and cursing the Shadow’s name. When Ron finally lets her catch him, he’s ready to die.

All she does is clutch him close and soak his robes with bitter tears. “You idiot,” she sobs. “You never ever _think_.”

* * *

No one else is told. Harry argues hotly against that, but Ron is adamant.

“Mum and Dad are already enough of a risk,” he says. And then, after Harry pleads some more in just the right way: “Maybe in a few years… when… when Europe’s steady…”

The funny thing is, though Harry and Hermione don’t seem to mind the increasing, unspoken assumption that Ron, as the Shadow’s bodyguard-slash-lover, is testing and recruiting them for similar positions, they think _Ron_ should mind the gossip.

“I only care what _you_ think,” he insists, and eventually they stop bringing it up.

* * *

Arthur’s non-reaction to the news is almost as irritating as the First Circle’s whiny hand-wringing. Ron quietly curses Sirius’ loose tongue for the first (trust _Dad_ to be the only one to suspect the right things), but has only himself to blame for the second.

The Circle _were_ convinced that he was going to trawl for partners at the Winter’s Eve masquerade, not show up with one too many hanging off his arm. The only reason the whining isn’t sustained is that he kept his aura cruelly high all evening, and Harry and Hermione were the only ones unaffected.

* * *

## 8

He’s unsure when they got used to the strength of the shadow in him. He asks, post masquerade, faux-casually, only to have both of them roll their eyes at him.

“You’ve always kind of… let it out, while we’re doing it,” Hermione says, blushing furiously.

“It’s much worse in battle,” Harry hastens to assure him. “And even then, it’s bearable.”

When he asks how the fuck they didn’t cotton on to his secret identity sooner, both of them look sheepish. “It was you,” they say, like that explains anything. Like accepting such a drastic change in him was nothing.

* * *

When Europe calms, Harry refuses the post of General. “Chang’s steadier than I’d be,” he insists. “We both know she’ll work, so stop sulking.”

“I’m not,” Ron lies, and for that, Hermione sits on him and mercilessly tickles him. If only the First Circle could see her now– no, scratch that, they’d only fear her even more.

He’s still not sure how she managed to make the monthly meetings quick and efficient _and_ have everyone leaving them mostly happy. He’s lucky to have her, and he tells her so.

“Wedding’s next month,” she says. “You’ll change your mind, soon enough.”

* * *

Ron despises society weddings, but attends because it’s better than putting down rebellions started by people holding really stupid grudges. Attending his own wedding is a nightmare.

Halfway through, Hermione forces him to suck Harry off to calm them both down, and he resents how well it works. At the end of the day, he tortures her until she vows that their heirs will all elope.

He didn’t think delaying her orgasm would work. He didn’t think any of this would work.

“Yes,” Harry breathes, later. “Because you’re an idiot. Our dark, paranoid idiot.”

“Hrgm,” Hermione agrees, already half asleep.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure if I'll end up adding more to this drabble series, so I'm marking it complete for now. Helpfully, the last few in this chapter all add up to a decent stopping point. 
> 
> I've really enjoyed working on these; it's been particularly fun compressing all the action and character development that would usually take me thousands of words into smaller packages. It's been even more fun playing around with this take on dark!Ron. Hopefully you enjoyed this all as much as I did. <3

**Author's Note:**

> Will probably add extra chapters as I write more drabbles in this series.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Return of ANBU Weasel](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16965945) by [skaralding](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skaralding/pseuds/skaralding)




End file.
